Wild Angels-Catalog-small-with-cover

W i l d A n g e l s the tensions and contradictions between primeval, “animal-like,” barbaric behaviors and moral and noble impulses. My painting attempts to address every aspect of “that place.” In my travels, I came across local pagan bacchanals which are still celebrated today. These parades and festivals, rich in vivid colors and forms, feature costumes of hybrid creatures, which are half-human and half-animal. It is a celebration of creativity and marvelous human imagination, but it is also terrifying. The question is, what is the limit? Could this creativity turn destructive? Under what circumstances? How did it lead to the extreme passion and violence that actually took place? My attempt to answer these questions without confining myself to these specific circumstances leads the figures presented in this body of work to drift, undergo transformation, and evolve into something completely different. In an effort to make them less concrete, they became angel-like figures in limbo. The paintings shift between situations and tensions: matter vs. mind, heaven vs. earth, order, creativity and beauty (Icarus’ wings) vs. devastation and chaos, and destructive passion vs. a moral ideal. The paintings seem to simultaneously convey attraction and rejection. On the one hand, they are delicate, magical and express poetic beauty, and on the other – something powerful, animal-like, and savage. How do you explain this dissonance? This accurately describes one central tension I was trying to explore in the paintings. Previously, I mentioned the journey that led me to this end result. I am very ambivalent about “that place.” While I sense an almost genetic kinship with it, it is mixed with disillusionment. An added layer is the hybrid creature, a kind of angel, who I perceive as a human creation reflecting the quest for beauty and harmony. This is a song of praise for that which is complete and refined, but which nevertheless retains the memory of a destructive, savage, and chaotic past, and (to my remorse), the inability to realize the ideal, while finding solace in flickering fragments of beauty. Winged human figures are known from ancient mythologies. They exist in limbo, between humans and gods, humans and animals, human beings and primeval savage beings; and are instinctual rather than rational. These figures embody the boundary between the grotesque and the sublime. They sometimes gravitate to this side, and sometimes to the other. We are familiar with the story of Icarus, who, in his vanity, disregarded the warning of his father Daedalus, and soared up into the sky enthusiastically until the sun melted the wax in his wings. We are familiar with the stories of